The Chronicle of Duke Erik: A Verse Epic from Medieval Sweden

By Eva Österberg

Written in the 14th century and enjoying a Swedish national status similar to the English Beowulf, this fascinating tale with many levels of meaning reflects the ideals of politics and aesthetics typical of the age of chivalry. The rhyming verses are accompanied by prose renditions and commentary, making the work enjoyable reading for anyone with an interest in medieval texts. A valuable source for the scholarly disciplines of comparative literature and poetics, this genuine piece of Scandinavian history contains intriguing dichotomies between center and periphery, male and female, and Christian and heathen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nordic Academic Press
• Release date: Jan 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9789187121333

Eva Österberg

Eva Österberg is a professor emerita in history at Lund University in Sweden and the former vice president of the International Committee of Historic Sciences. She is the author of Friendship and Love, Ethics and Politics: Studies in Medieval and Early Modern History.

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Half Title of The Chronicle of Duke ErikBook Title of The Chronicle of Duke Erik

This work is published with the financial support of

The Anglo-Swedish Literary Foundation

Konung Gustaf VI Adolfs fond för svensk kultur

Stiftelsen Längmanska kulturfonden

Nordic Academic Press

P.O. Box 1206

SE-221 05 Lund

Sweden

www.nordicacademicpress.com

© Nordic Academic Press and the translators 2012

Swedish linguistic advice: Zeth Alvered

Typesetting: Stilbildarna i Mölle, Frederic Täckström, sbmolle.com

Jacket: Design for livet

Jacket image: Detail of Duke Erik’s seal as reproduced in The History of Sweden vol. 1, O. Montelius 1877.

Map: Johan Tufvesson

Printed by ScandBook, Sweden 2012

ISBN 978-91-85509-57-7

Contents

Duke Erik and his tragic fate. Introduction by Professor Eva Österberg

Translators’ remarks

The Chronicle of Duke Erik

1. Prologue

2. Erik the Lisper and Stumbler

3. Crusade against the Tavasts

4. Earl Birger and Joar Blå

5. Earl Birger’s sons

6. The Folkung rebellion

7. Young Lord Karl – the knight of God

8. Valdemar marries Sophia of Denmark

9. Earl Birger’s laws

10. The founding of Stockholm

11. Earl Birger’s death

12. Valdemar succeeds to the throne

13. The murder of King Erik Ploughpenny

14. King Valdemar och Jutta

15. Valdemar’s children

16. Discord between Valdemar and his brothers

17. The Battle of Hova

18. Valdemar loses half his kingdom

19. Duke Magnus’ wedding

20. Erik Klipping, Magnus and Valdemar

21. The Battle of Ettak

22. Duke Magnus is elected king

23. Magnus’ foreign favourites

24. Magnus suppresses the Folkungs

25. Danes and Swedes joust

26. Valdemar’s wives

27. King Magnus – benefactor of the Church

28. Prince Birger betrothed

29. King Magnus’ death

30. Tyrgils Knutsson

31. Valdemar and his son in captivity

32. Battles with the heathen

33. King Birger’s wedding

34. New battles in the east

35. Mats Kettilmundsson challenges the Russians

36. Truce

37. The defeat of the Swedes at Landskrona

38. Coronation festivities at Söderköping

39. Duke Erik at the court in Oslo

40. Tyrgils Knutsson’s wedding

41. Tyrgils Knutsson leaves the service of the dukes

42. King Birger accuses the dukes

43. The dukes visit King Erik of Denmark

44. The court at Fagradal

45. Duke Erik goes to Norway

46. Birger’s struggle against the dukes and King Håkan

47. Duke Erik receives Varberg

48. Duke Valdemar’s divorce

49. Tyrgils Knutsson is imprisoned

50. Tyrgils is executed

51. A court at Bjälbo

52. The Håtuna game

53. King Birger in captivity

54. A Danish army in Västergötland

55. Duke Erik and King Håkan fall out

56. The dukes harry in Skåne

57. German mercenaries on the ram

58. Birger perfidiously swears himself free

59. The dukes battle with the Norwegians

60. Naval battles

61. Duke Erik invades Norway

62. Kings Erik Menved and Birger against the dukes

63. The dukes capture Kungahälla

64. Reconciliation

65. A court at Lödöse

66. Peaceful times

67. Birger demands tax from the Gotlanders

68. The weddings of the dukes in Oslo

69. The banqueting hall at Lödöse

70. Festive days in Lödöse

71. Duke Valdemar visits Nyköping

72. The journey of the dukes to Nyköping

73. The banquet at Nyköping

74. The dukes’ men are seized

75. Birger triumphs

76. The captivity of the dukes

77. Birger attempts to recover the whole kingdom

78. The death of the dukes

79. The campaign against King Birger and his son

80. The siege of Stegeborg

81. Mats Kettilmundsson becomes chamberlain

82. The funeral of the dukes

83. Nyköping falls

84. Magnus Birgersson is handed over

85. Battles in Skåne

86. Birger’s henchmen are punished

87. The royal pair flee to Denmark

88. Magnus Birgersson is executed

89. Magnus Eriksson is elected king

90. Magnus as king of two realms

Commentary

The Bjälbo dynasty and biographical details

Index of persons

Index of place names

Professor Eva Österberg

Duke Erik and his tragic fate

A masterpiece of Swedish medieval literature

The Swedes of the High Middle Ages

‘God let us praise and celebrate! For He did all good things create’. Those are the opening lines of the verse chronicle that occupies a unique place in Swedish literature and the historiography of the High Middle Ages. Unique, but also controversial.

Several of Sweden’s leading medieval historians have produced acute analyses of the text, among them Ingvar Andersson, Erik Lönnroth and Jerker Rosén. The Chronicle has also attracted international interest from Corinne Péneau and others. The general opinion has been that the Chronicle does more or less accurately reflect the real politics of Sweden during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. But it also forms part of Europe’s courtly literature. Thus the text of the chronicle constitutes an attempt at writing history, while at the same time it is constrained by the stylistic demands of the genre and the ideological currents of its epoch.

God is to be honoured for His power in heaven and on earth. He has conjured forth hills and meadows, leaves and plants, earth and sand, writes the anonymous author of the Chronicle of Duke Erik. Among the many countries created by God is Sweden, far up in the North. A land of doughty warriors, noble knights, and brave heroes:

The world He made so much contains:

woodland, pastures, hills and plains,

leaves and grass, water and sand,

so much joy and many a land,

and there among them Sweden lies.

He who northward turns his eyes

will that country see outlined.

There good warriors you will find,

many a hero and noble knight.

Already from this one extract we can see certain basic facts about the context of the Chronicle. It was quite clearly produced after the conversion of Sweden to Christianity, which in the main occurred some time before or during the eleventh century. As we proceed further through the text, it emerges that the story in the Chronicle extends from 1229 to 1319. It must therefore have been written down shortly after that. We also realise that the author was a man who was able to read and write, and had some knowledge of the map of Europe. He was interested in the glorious deeds of brave knights, dukes, and kings but also in legislation and church buildings. On the other hand, what Sweden looked like, how far north the kingdom extended and what people inhabited the country, apart from kings and magnates, are subjects passed over in silence in the prologue to the Chronicle.

During the Middle Ages and long afterwards, Sweden was in fact a predominantly agrarian region. Farms and villages were thinly dispersed across a landscape of vast forests and numerous lakes and – further north – hilly and mountainous areas. The climate was often severe. Socially speaking, those farmers who owned their own land were the dominant group, Sweden’s elites being small. In the early fourteenth century, when the Chronicle of Duke Erik was written, what might be called a Swedish realm still only embraced parts of the present-day Sweden. The provinces of Bohuslän, Halland, and Skåne in the west, south-west, and south belonged to Norway or Denmark during that period. Finland, which subsequently would belong to Sweden for centuries, was still only partially integrated into the Swedish dominions. Large regions in what is now northern Sweden were likewise barely incorporated into the territory of the Swedish crown, while other parts of the country had hardly even begun to be cultivated. A strong and stable Swedish State was a distant prospect. Instead, fierce internal conflicts raged between the various elite kindreds – or within a single kindred – during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

It was nonetheless precisely during the period covered by the Chronicle of Duke Erik that the foundations were laid of a more effective state structure. How far the exercise of power by Sweden’s kings should extend was gradually defined more closely. The economic basis for a central authority was expanded. Spiritual and secular elite groups were by degrees associated with royal power by means of privileges. An extensive process of legislation was initiated.

In legislative terms a significant step towards common norms was taken when the laws of the various provinces were written down during the thirteenth and early fourteenth century. They would later be followed by a nationwide legal code in 1350 (the National Law Code of Magnus Eriksson). Towards the end of the thirteenth century, the Crown had introduced tax exemption for magnates in return for their readiness to serve under arms with their followers in defence of the realm (the Statute of Alsnö, 1280). That signified the beginning of a process by which the native nobility became associated with the Crown in a feudal relationship of loyalty. The Church and the monasteries received land through donations. The Crown not only possessed land of its own, but was also given the right to receive some of the fines from the administration of justice and to raise taxes from the Swedish people. The taxes replaced the old obligations to participate in war or to feed the king’s retinue when he visited an area.

It is uncertain, should one wish to have exact figures, how large the population of Sweden was during the High Middle Ages or its break-down by different social strata. The approximate proportions between the population groups are scarcely in dispute, however. An overwhelming majority of the population consisted of farmers and their households; people who made a living from agriculture, cattle farming, hunting, and fishing. To all appearances the population increased considerably during the thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century. Written sources, analyses of place names, and archaeological evidence all point to large parts of central Sweden being brought under cultivation during the High Middle Ages. But then, like so many other European countries, the kingdom was struck by the Black Death in around 1350, and later by other pestilences in the early fifteenth century. These epidemics decimated the population in certain regions. Some scholars have therefore been of the opinion that the Swedish population around 1350 may have been of roughly the same size as it would become around the middle of the sixteenth century, once the demographic consequences of the pandemics had to some extent been reversed. Other scholars refuse to speculate at all.

If we move further ahead in time, it has proved possible to calculate the population of Sweden, Finland excepted, to have been approximately 600,000 people in around 1570. The great majority lived and worked in the countryside. Only a couple of per cent of the people lived in the towns. Those who were members of the clergy and the nobility each represented no more than the odd per cent of the population. More than 45 per cent of the land within the realm (excluding Finland) at the beginning of the sixteenth century was owned by farmers who held their land as long as they paid their taxes to the Crown. The Church owned about 25 per cent and the nobility 24 per cent of the land, while the possessions of the Crown as such did not amount to more than about 6 per cent. The land that did not belong to the farmers themselves was as a rule cultivated as small-scale farms by tenant farmers who paid rent to the landowners. Only a fraction of the land was occupied by castles, major estates or small towns.

These facts concerning the Swedish kingdom in the sixteenth century cannot simply be transposed to the early fourteenth century, of course. Yet they do indicate what Sweden may have looked like in the early fourteenth century. It is unlikely that more than half a million people lived in the Swedish kingdom as it was then, just as it is likely that around 95 per cent of the population consisted of farmers and their households. The elites were in quantitative terms very small. They, too, were rooted in the various centres of the rural regions. Stockholm had not yet developed into an obvious centre of the realm, and instead the kings and their retinues moved around between various castles.

Most people lived and worked in the countryside in the rest of Europe as well at this time. In countries like Italy, France, and England, however, the urban population played a more significant role than in Sweden, and more farmers were attached to the large estates of the feudal lords. Certain regions in Europe were particularly urbanised, such as the Netherlands, northern France, and the Thames valley. The giant city by the standards of the time was Paris, the population of which reached about 90,000 by the end of the thirteenth century. In Sweden, on the other hand, the few existing towns, apart from Stockholm, were very small, generally with populations of fewer than 2,000 people. Thus, however much one recon-figures the social and demographic data, Sweden, Norway and Finland, stands out during the fourteenth century as a sparsely inhabited agrarian society. That makes it all the more interesting to consider the circles in which the Chronicle of Duke Erik could have been initiated and written, and where it would have found a responsive audience. For, in spite of everything, there were aristocratic milieux prepared to absorb the cultural influences coming from other parts of Europe.

People and elites in the Chronicle of Duke Erik

In striking contrast with the down-to-earth background that life in Sweden provided is the remarkable description in the Chronicle of Duke Erik of a courtly culture of chivalry, Swedish crusades on the other side of the Baltic Sea, and a dramatic struggle for political power.

Of farmers and craftsmen we do not see much in the Chronicle. Yet it should be emphasised that they are not entirely invisible. They are glimpsed as participants in military campaigns, for example when King Erik the Lisper and Stumbler (1222–1250) by force of arms compelled a part of Finland to submit to the Christian Swedish State. The king, the Chronicle says, summoned his knights and their equals, but the call to arms was also sent ‘to peasants and to fighting men – as rulers still do now, as then’ (3:2). The author of the Chronicle even pays regard to the poor wives of the soldiers. The women did not know if their men would come home alive, and they were desperate: ‘Hands were wrung and tears were shed by many a wife left on her own.’ (3:24–25) That soldiers could fall ill because their food had rotted is described in graphic terms in connection with a later siege of a fortress: ‘When they at table took their seat, seeming well, to drink and eat, their teeth fell out upon the table – what man that to endure is able? So many from that scourge did die, the fort did almost empty lie’ (37:9–11). Commoners likewise served as infantry alongside mercenary troops in the bloody civil conflicts between the claimants to the throne, as at the Battle of Hova in 1275, when King Valdemar Birgersson (1250–1275) was defeated by his brothers:

Then a man came running from the fray,

badly wounded and in disarray,

and advised the king that he should flee

and to fight elsewhere prepared to be.

‘Our men in bogs and marshes are all stuck;

We have this battle lost, worse luck!’ (17:17–20)

The presence of the broad masses is similarly implied as craftsmen or labourers when castles or monasteries are built, or as onlookers at tournaments and royal weddings. Both men and women are referred to as the individuals covered by legislation. The leader of the country during the minority of Valdemar (1250–1260) had been his father, Earl Birger. The latter laid down how the rules of inheritance and how household peace should be maintained.

Earl Birger then the law ordained

that has since been long maintained,

that a sister shall inherit with her brother

a third from both their father and their mother,

and if there other relatives should be,

she shall inherit then as well as he.

He also did domestic peace defend. (9:1–7)

The women are said to have mourned Earl Birger especially deeply and to have prayed for his soul, as he ‘gave them legal rights so strong, punishing those who did them wrong, that no one dared them to abuse, unless prepared his head to lose.’

But be they farmers, foot soldiers, or craftsmen, they are not assigned any independent roles as political actors in the Chronicle – nor of course are their women or children. That is not so surprising. Any ambition on the part of the author of the Chronicle to write what modern historians would call ‘history from below’ scarcely existed in the historiography of that period, which generally preferred to dwell on great men and their exploits. Against that background, we ought rather to note those occasions when the Chronicle does nonetheless explain the necessary participation of the people, as in the election as king in 1319 of Magnus Eriksson, that is to say the son of the principal character, from whom the Chronicle has acquired its name – Duke Erik.

It is thus above all rival royal kindreds and their supporters, queens and high-born wives, the highest office-holders in the kingdom and other magnates, together with the representatives of the Church, who are presented in the text – as well as magnificent banquets, splendid weddings, coronations, chivalrous games and battles, together with the building of monasteries and the handing down of law. The action does not take place in a wilderness completely devoid of social order, but the social order was different in appearance to that of the strong national-states that were to arise a couple of centuries later throughout Europe. In the thirteenth century, Sweden was only an emerging kingdom, Christian and in contact with the rest of Europe, with a monarchy that attempted to take responsibility for peace in the kingdom and the defence of its borders.

It was furthermore a period when what scholars call the twelfth-century renaissance was well established in Europe. It brought about a flowering of literature and art, in religious texts as well as in heroic tales and courtly love poetry. Consciousness of the individual increased, and customs became somewhat more civilised, at least among the educated elites. Chivalric ideals developed at royal and aristocratic courts, not least in France and Germany; among other things, they involved faithfulness towards feudal lords, friends and noble ladies, who were courted in ritualised forms. The culture of chivalry was expressed in court ceremonial, but was defined from the twelfth century onward in literary genres such as troubadour poems and chivalric romances. Those romances dealt above all with love, war, and adventures. Many heroes were derived from the world of Celtic legends, including King Arthur, Perceval, and Tristan. In the form of the so-called ‘Eufemia ballads’ (named for the Norwegian queen, Eufemia, mother of Duke Erik’s wife Ingeborg) courtly literature was introduced to Sweden towards the end of the thirteenth century. Together with the Chronicle of Duke Erik, the three chivalric romances of the Eufemia ballads have been characterised as the foremost literary manifestations of courtly culture in Sweden.

The Swedish kingdom of the thirteenth century undoubtedly showed the first signs of a stabilisation of those forces that would later dominate the politics of the kingdom (king, Church, council). Yet we must be wary of taking for granted that those political structures were already firmly established during the period covered by the Chronicle. Modern research emphasises that earlier historians often exaggerated the effectiveness of the institutional and constitutional process. There has been a tendency to underestimate how long the king continued to be regarded as merely one among equals (primus inter pares) rather than as a representative of State power. There were often several claimants to the throne. Shifting coalitions among the elites, arising from alliances based on kinship or friendship, continued to play a significant role in power relations even in the High Middle Ages. As the Nordic countries had a system in which kinship was reckoned on both the mother’s and the father’s side, potential relatives could be numerous. Within that densely ramifying structure of kinship it was therefore the degree of proximity, contacts, and friendship that had to decide which part of the kindred really functioned as a social alliance. Women could be as important as men in those networks. Nor was it a foregone conclusion which young man in a set of royal sons would succeed to the throne as long as kings still had to be elected. Patrilineal succession with precedence given to the eldest son was only introduced later.

The period with which the Chronicle of Duke Erik deals – roughly the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth century – was thus a transitional period in several respects: politically, culturally, and socially. That is also noticeable in the Chronicle. It is one of the things that makes it such a fascinating and ambiguous text.

Who wrote the Chronicle – and when?

The author of the Chronicle of Duke Erik is unknown. Scholars have argued both about when the text was composed and who initiated and wrote it. The Chronicle survives only as manuscript copies from the second half of the fifteenth century, which makes the dating uncertain. Following analyses of the Chronicle’s biases and the named individuals on whom it focuses, several scholars have concluded that it was probably written some time between 1322 and 1332, as the Chronicle mentions that a certain nobleman (Sir Bo) had died, while other documents show that a Bo Nilsson wrote his will in September 1322. The presumed identification of Sir Bo with Bo Nilsson would provide a terminus post quem, a point in time after which the Chronicle must have been written. Other scholars think it is uncertain who Sir Bo was. That point of view would allow for the Chronicle to have already been written as early as 1320–21, immediately after the concluding event in the text, the royal election of 1319. Opinions thus differ both with regard to the author and to the exact dating.

The Chronicle shows a bias in favour of Duke Erik Magnusson, the father of the infant Magnus Eriksson who, at the end of the Chronicle, is elected king. According to one theory, the text must therefore have been created at the very beginning of the 1320s, in the aristocratic circles around the chamberlain Mats Kettilmundsson, who actively championed Duke Erik, or even at the court of Erik’s wife, Duchess Ingeborg, at Varberg. Mats Kettilmundsson emerges as a brave knight in the Chronicle. His courage is, for example, praised in a passage concerning the battles of the Swedish forces with the Russians: Mats proudly invites the very best of the knights on the opposing side to confront him alone and try to unsaddle him. The Russian ‘pagans’, according to the Chronicle, are cowardly and take no risks. Mats, on the other hand, is described as a splendid knight who bravely challenges the enemy to single combat! And Duchess Ingeborg is consistently eulogised throughout the Chronicle. The positive images of Mats and Ingeborg would thus not contradict the hypotheses that the Chronicle was written in close proximity to them, possibly in the early 1320s.

According to other scholars, the Chronicle was more likely created later, more specifically at the time when King Magnus Eriksson was declared of age in 1332. What provides support for that hypothesis is the fact that the Chronicle not only sides with Duke Erik in the conflicts over royal power, but also has an aristocratic bias in its implicit opposition to any increase in the powers of the king. When the little boy Magnus Eriksson is elected king at the Stone of Mora in 1319, the Chronicle emphasises that it was just that: a matter of election, in accordance with the wishes of all the provinces and with the law. Magnus should therefore be good and benevolent towards the people all his life – the message the magnates wished to impress on Magnus when he came to power as an adult.

It is evident that the Chronicle also expresses a positive view of what the Church and the monasteries represent. It consistently lauds the building of churches and monasteries, and devotes much space to the crusades by the Swedes. Some scholars have therefore found it plausible to seek the origin of the Chronicle both in aristocratic circles and among churchmen. According to one hypothesis, the Chronicle was created in around 1325, on the initiative of a lawspeaker (a regional head of judicial administration). A cleric from Västergötland was supposedly responsible for the writing itself. He had an ecclesiastical background, but served as secretary to Duke Erik and Duchess Ingeborg. The author of the Chronicle would in that case have been a man who was in touch with the representatives of the law as well as those who occupied the seats of power. That would explain how oral traditions, information from monastic annals, and knowledge of legal reforms all formed part of the background material of the Chronicle. The author, according to that hypothesis, would also have interacted on familiar terms with those individuals of royal descent (Duke Erik and Duchess Ingeborg) who, through Ingeborg’s mother, Queen Eufemia of Norway, strongly contributed to the introduction of courtly literature in Scandinavia.

Much effort has been expended on gathering circumstantial evidence for these diverse conceptions through studies of the content, biases, and language of the Chronicle. No scholar can be said to have arrived at an unchallenged conclusion. All in all, however, the hypotheses have delimited the origin of the Chronicle in a positive manner: it came into being some time between 1320 and 1332 in circles with a sympathetic attitude to Duke Erik and the elite group around him, as well as to the Christian notions and ideals of the

European nobility. The conclusion to be drawn is that the originating milieu in a wider sense of the Chronicle of Duke Erik was presumably aristocratic circles. The actual author cannot be identified with any certainty. But he appears to have been well-informed about political conflicts, chivalric life, crusades, and the law. That he was a cleric and secretary at the court of the duke and duchess, as Bengt R. Jonsson has suggested in the latest contribution to the debate, is undeniably an interesting possibility.

The Chronicle of Duke Erik as political history

The Chronicle thus covers the period from 1229 to the election of